


To Wine and Dine the IOA

by BloodMooninSpace



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Feast Prep, Food Porn, Gen, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 07:26:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13759176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodMooninSpace/pseuds/BloodMooninSpace
Summary: After years without contact from Earth, Chef Marisol Pucci of Atlantis readies the diplomatic welcome feast.





	To Wine and Dine the IOA

**Author's Note:**

> I've always loved a good feast scene, and it is part of what led me to enrolling in culinary school. On a lot of occasions, I've found myself daydreaming about the kind of FOOD they could have in fantasy universes if the authors understood food science. 
> 
> Marisol and Tate, bless their little OC selves, have been the subject of MANY of my daydreams, as I dream about all the dishes they make on Atlantis! Because yeah, Tuttle Root makes soup, But what kind of soup, how does it behave? Tava beans? Why are these the only two kinds of Pegasus foods I know of!!!??? 
> 
> I like food. Food is as magical as dragons, BUT IT IS REAL!!! 
> 
> And any author who fades to black over a feast scene is missing out on some prime worldbuilding space. Food can tell you a lot about a culture, and it appeals to so many of our senses. Sooo .. this is what happens when I'm taking a study break?
> 
> ***
> 
> This story has been on my hard disk for several years, and while I may write the anthropologists remix at some point, talking about the customs and why this feast is a big "we don't need you" to Earth, as it is served in Pegasus trading mannerisms. For now, I'm not sitting on it any longer.

Chef Marisol Pucci looked at the finished plates and beamed. It was Pegasus food, every last ingredient, and the visiting delegation from the IOA would fawn over it, or she'd burn her chef's whites.

This was their first contact with Earth in two and a half years. Making an incredible impression at the dining table would provide much-needed support for Dr. Weir, Teyla, and the rest of the Pegasus representatives on the Atlantean Council.  

* * *

The appetizer course was a tava bean chip (with a heavier texture than a corn chip, they were a favorite snack food), served with a salsa made from the local yellow-veined white tomato-like Elaras fruit, native to the Chopek home planet.  The Chopak people lived entirely in an elaborate cave system miles across. The Chopak had been safe from the Wraith for three Cullings, and they favored small families, rightly believing that the caves protected them from the Wraith. When the Chopak visit Atlantis, they are jittery and nervous under the open sky.

The sweet peppers in the salsa--pale gold, pure white, and a delicate violet--came from three different worlds. The spices were all Dhalla spices, gathered from the far reaches of their sprawling migratory routes. The Dhalla were one of the few Pegasus cultures to employ pack animals; the Dhalla culture was composed of many tribes scattered over the continents of their homeworld, hunting and gathering.  Their spacegate leaves them vulnerable visitation by the Wraith: they were migratory as a religious practice, to ward off the "Great Culling by Fire".    

The appetizer course was served with a tumbler of the lighter version of the popular Chopak Killira-fruit limeade. (The well watered down version the IOA would be gentle compared to the summer mix the Lanteans made. It had enough sugar in it to stand a spoon up straight, and enough Killira juice to eat the spoon with the acid, as the saying went around the city.) Elegant crystal-clear glass pitchers were placed strategically at the tables in the council chamber, filled with ice water. By each place setting there was a water glass, and two wine glasses, one for the dry appetizer white wine, the second a deep bowled red wine glass. With the cheese course would be served a flight of wines to pair and sample, served to each guest on a tray hand carved by Dandi, and Athosian carver. 

The side salad contained iron-rich white-veined black leafy "lettuce" that was actually a lichen, it grew deep within a geologically-significant cave of the Fennas people. The chasms were long and winding, with diffuse light filtering into their deep vertical shafts. The locals had been eating the lichen raw for as far back as their oral tradition could report. It had a strong metallic taste that paired amazingly well with the bright purple lettuces of Hoff. The purple Hoffan lettuce was sweet and heavy, somewhere between a sweet onion and the heaviness of cabbage. Mixed with dried chips of Lantean deep green kelp, with their nuanced, mineral-heavy saltiness, the salad was incredible. 

The salad dressing was a nearly textbook vinaigrette: Avoc oil and a Mylas berry wine vinegar reduced from a white wine made from a delicate white berry genetically similar to Terrestrial blueberries.  It had a dozen names on the dozen worlds it was found on, but the members of the Atlantis Mission called them by their Athosian name: Mylas berries. Seasoned with Atlantean sea salt, the basic vinaigrette transformed the tossed salad melding and augmenting their flavors. Garnishing the salad was a scattering of crumbled and roasted Aalii nuts, a handful of dried Mylas, and Bog Berries, a plum grape-sized berry that grew like a cranberry, but was more closely related to cattails than cranberries. 

The cheese course was cheeses of over a dozen worlds. Hard blue speckled flakes of Yara cheeses. Soft thumb-sized rounds of the creamy Eillu cheese that melted over the tongue at the first bite. Bright yellow wedges of the sharp Tekk cheese, aged with capsaicin-heavy Murri peppers. There were soft yellow cheeses made like mozzarella from a creature that was goat-like but with the branching antlers of a deer.  The animal lived on a world whose mountainous terrain and temperate climate reminded the Greek member of the Expedition so viscerally of home that he burst into tears upon the sight of it, spawning an interplanetary incident that took three weeks and a wedding to solve.    

Small baguette slices were arranged on the serving platters so the diners could cleanse their palates between tastes. The greatest discovery Dr. Dumas had made when she was analyzing the crops of Pegasus was the discovery of a non-gluten substance that acted like gluten in its structural properties, but it was particularly susceptible to several of the acids and bacteria in the human digestive system. With one of the soldiers and two of the scientists exhibiting celiacs disease, having a structural glue protein that does not harm the scillia in their stomachs is a blessing. 

A dozen wines, chosen because they paired best with the cheeses, accompanied the cheese course.  The flight of wines would be served in the set of tiny wine flutes of hand blown glass; each one held barely two ounces of the aged wines, to better pace the diners' alcohol consumption for the evening.

The centerpiece of the meal was a serving of slow-roasted Isa, a bird from the wild lakes north of the Hoffan cities. The filter-feeding bird was roughly twice the size of a duck, and had a richly marbled meat, with thin veins of fat not terribly unlike a cross section of Kobe beef. It was the most delicately-flavored of the Pegasus meats they had discovered in its explorations.  The Isa's brown, green, and black feathers also made wonderful trade goods at several of the off world markets.

Marisol had brined the Isa in Mootoo brine. They'd discovered the Mootoo on an uninhabited world with a space Gate.  It was a mahogany-red citrus fruit with multiple football-shaped "fingers" that grew in two layers of seven-pronged stars around a central, nearly round, globe. The "fingers" were sweet and could be eaten raw, but the juice of the center orb had a more acidic pH that made it too sour for snacking, but perfect for reducing into a brine. When seasoned with Liss, a Pegasus herb not unlike dill that grew abundantly on over half of their trading partners' worlds, the brining gave the Isa notes of sweetness cut with a light acidity that was succulent.

She'd pan-seared off individual slivers of the Isa in a Mootoo reduction, caramelizing some of the natural sugars in the fruit onto the surface of the medium-rare meat.  She'd chosen to serve the Isa over a bed of Lantean seaweeds. The fascinating thing about the blue seaweed was its carnivorous nature. Like a Terrestrial pitcher plant, the seaweed used a sticky compound to catch and hold its prey, though its prey was fish, not bugs. The plant caught its prey, then grew a digestive sac over it. Because of this, the seaweed was rich in Omega-3's, and had a great umami flavor to it.  The heavy green kelp made an excellent tie-in to the seaweed in the side salad was. The finishing touch to the entree was a crust of crushed and roasted Aalii nuts.

To the natives of Chopak, the nuts were a staple, the Aalii trees growing abundantly across their rolling countryside; to the members of the Expedition, they were a rare treat. Aalii nuts had the full-bodied easy crunch of a walnut paired with the rich flavor of a chestnut. Glazed with Hoffan honey and oven roasted, they were a sweet nutty taste of heaven.

The main dish was served with baskets of naan made with the Hoffan field wheat. The bread was made with a sourdough starter and had rich, complex flavors. The Hoffans had fallen in love with the Tandoori oven, and the bread that could be made to order so readily.  Before Hoffans began bringing Tauri cooking methods back to Hoff, the Hoffans had eaten tough scone-like rolls and had an abundance of porridges and soups in their general diet. The ingredients and flavorants in the Hoffan bakeries sourdough bins may have been native to Pegasus, but that was a Tauri bread-making tradition, adopted in the far reaches of distant stars.

The dessert course was a point of pride for Marisol. Dr. Sandoval was the one who had discovered the Pegasus cacao trees, as well as the hot peppers that could be used for Dr. Sandoval's favorite: Mayan mochas. From those beans, Marisol could produce a dark chocolate lava cake with enough spice to be noticeable, but with a heavy cream sauce to provide a soothing counterpoint to the heat.

* * *

 

Marisol checked over the prep list and plating guides one last time before instructing her staff, “Alright! We are five minutes from guest arrival, let’s get that first course to the servette!”

**Author's Note:**

> So, what did you think?
> 
> Marisol Pucci is fancast as Rosario Dawson, and apparently, Tate doesn't actually appear in this fic.


End file.
